MACBETH

 

David Tennant and Cush Jumbo in MACBETH. Donmar Photo by Marc Brenner

Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

Directed on stage at the Donmar Warehouse by Max Webster. Directed for the screen by Tom Van Someren. Binaural sound design by Gareth Fry. Composer and musical director Alasdair Macrae. Gaelic Singer Kathleen MacInnes. Designer Rosanna Vize. Lighting designer Bruno Poet.Movement director Shalley Maxwell. Fight directors Rachel Brown Williams and Ruth Cooper-Brown. Casting director Anna Cooper. A Trafalgar Releasing Production in association with Donmar Warehouse. Sharmill Films. In cinemas from February 20th.  

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

 Macbeth is the least enigmatic of Shakespeare’s tragedies. From the moment Macbeth (David Tennant) and Banquo(Cal MacAninch) encounter the three weird sisters on the heath, the audience learns of the course of events that will ultimately lead to the downfall of a noble hero as a result of his tragic flaw,” vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself and fall on the other”. It is the undoing that will be done by his wife (Cush Jumbo), affirmed by the witches’ prophesies and carried out with tragic consequences. It is also the tragedy of the heat-oppressed brain. It is the tragedy of a man whose mind is plagued with scorpions. It is the tragedy of a man who puts his faith in the supernatural rather than the logic of reality.

Cush Jumbo as Lady Macbeth

In the intimate surrounds of London’s Donmar Warehouse, director Max Webster has brilliantly imagined a production of Shakespeare’s play that strips away all artifice of the theatre and trusts to the power of the actors’ storytelling. In a brilliant stroke of invention Webster removes the physical depiction of secret black and midnight hags and audiences hear the prophesies  through headphones that transport the ominous predictions to the innermost recesses of the audience’s minds. At one point, the Ensemble in a taunting ritual of prophesy amplify accusation and guilt in presenting the prophesies that will undo the tyrant when Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane and no man born of woman slays Macbeth.

 

Noof Oussalam as Macduff

Central to the drama are the extraordinary performances of David Tennant as Macbeth and Cush Jumbo as Lady Macbeth. Tim Van Someren’s screen direction brings the audience into the very minds of the actors. Close ups draw us into the very thoughts and feelings, exposing motive and charting the predictable course of Fate. Tennant’s towering performance as Macbeth presents a protagonist doomed the moment he gazes upon his bloodied hands and the daggers of his deed. Jumbo’s  Lady Macbeth  begins her decline from provocateur to pitiful outcast at the moment of rejection by Macbeth. “Be innocent of the knowledge dearest chuck til thou applaudst the deed.” Jumbo’s plaintive sleepwalking scene and descent into insanity evoke just retribution and yet Jumbo’s magnetism in performance may conjure sympathy for her sorry fate. What’s done cannot be undone as Macbeth pursues his bloody act. Tennant plays the man possessed. Convinced by his wife to enact the crime, he is a man out of control. Gripped by fear and doubt and panic. Tennant’s Macbeth on stage and on film mesmerises as he cuts his swathe through murder upon murder. The murder of Lady Macduff (Rona Morison) and her son (Casper Knopf) chill to the bone. Macduff’s grief trumpets the cry for revenge. From this moment forth and urged on by Malcolm (Ross Watt) the witches’ final prophesies are ignited and the stage is set for the confrontation between Macbeth and Macduff (Noof Ousselam). The final battle upon the stage is choreographed to the accompaniment of an echoing soundtrack of clanging swords . 

Malcolm (Ross Watt) Duncan(Benny Young) and Ensemble

 

The power of intimacy is at the very heart of this production as it could well have been four centuries ago. Webster and van Someren imbue Shakespeare’s psychological thriller with suspense and horror. Comic relief is provided by the Porter’s scene with Jatinder Singh Randhawa engaging with a modern day audience and offering the humour of our time interspersed with Shakespeare’s text. It also allows time for Tennant and Jumbo to wipe the blood from their hands and clothes. The universality of Shakespeare’s work rings true in word and action. A Scottish folk band capture the immortal spirit of the jig during the banquet scene.

Director Webster’s electrifying imagining  of Shakespeare’s Macbeth will thrill audiences. The Donmar Warehouse production attests to Shakespeare’s genius and the brilliance of his storytelling. It is an opportunity to experience the very best of British theatre.

Banquo (Cal MacAninch) and Macbeth (David Tennant)